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Dinner on a Down Note

Weeks after the wreck Dan sat on his couch watching television.  He’d gone on a bender and Mary wasn’t pleased.  Sometimes they drank together but Mary was a lightweight and prone to nasty hangovers.  Three days ago she had called in sick to work and thrown up all day.  Subsequently she had lost all desire to drink.  Dan’s back and neck were bothering him from the car accident, though he already suffered chronic back pain working construction over many years.

“I’m going to get out of this racket,” Dan said often.

“And do what instead?” Mary always responded.

It was as far as the discussion went.

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Learning About Tough Love in Costa Rica

It had all started with Jenny on a sunny day that turned to twilight, around 6. I was walking to the bus stop from the cultural center in Costa Rica’s capital of San Jose where I was taking a two-week Spanish language class. That’s when I saw her, the exotic-looking lady who captured my eye. She looked to be in her mid-30s, a combination of Central American indigenous Indian mixed in with Spanish/European heritage.

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Bayrose Files – Novel Excerpt

I’d always loved Provincetown. When I was a kid in New Jersey, my parents would rent a cottage in Wellfleet for a week (or sometimes two when they could afford it), and my memories of those vacations are among the sweetest of my childhood. The beaches and the air and the ocean and the food: all of those were delightful, of course, but there was always one day set aside for visiting “Ptown,” which I guess my parents considered the epitome of weird, and part of our education...

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Daddio

“I’ve made my contribution. I’m done.” He waved his right hand like he was dismissing an entire life.

“Oh, please. I don’t like to hear this.” Mom said, brow furrowed, the corners of her eyes creased, the edges of her lips turned down.

“What do you mean, done? Like done done? With your life?” I was curious about this feeling of his.

“Yes,” he said. He rubbed his hands on the table. It was a tell, his whiskey buzz settling in.